And that's totally fair, but at the same time something of a catch-22. The most well-funded FOSS projects (and thus, those one is most likely to be paid to work

And that's totally fair, but at the same time something of a catch-22. The most well-funded FOSS projects (and thus, those one is most likely to be paid to work on) are generally those that are more polished. What this means to me is that projects need to have a very focused featureset and polish culture from the very beginning to kickstart the virtuous cycle.